While the story of Stanislav Petrov – the Soviet Lieutenant Colonel who likely saved the world from nuclear holocaust in 1983 – is often trotted out to advocate for the view that human beings ought to be kept “in the loop” of automated weapons’ responses, I argue that the episode in fact belies this reading. By attending more closely to the features of this event – to Petrov’s professional background, to his familiarity with the warning system, and to his decisions (...) to defy his protocol – it becomes clear that Petrov was not seamlessly working “in his loop,” but reassessing it entirely. I claim that this exhibits a paradox intrinsic to all automated loops: namely, that their optimum function in fact rests on unforeseen human interventions that cannot be reliably codified ex ante, that is, that good judgment cannot simply be “programmed into” their protocols. This dependence, moreover, reveals automation’s ineluctable need for virtue ethics – not in the usual sense (whereby ethics deliberates about, say, possible damages and loss of life), but in the sense that ethical judgment, rightly understood, entails the reassessment of all of the conditions surrounding a decision, including whether a protocol should be followed at all. (shrink)

My considerations are organised into four sections. The first section provides a survey of some significant developments that determine contemporary philosophical discussion on the subject of ‘time’. In the second section, I show how the question of time and the issue of media are linked with one another in the views of two influential contemporary philosophers: Jacques Derrida and Richard Rorty. Finally, in the third section, the temporal implications of cultural practices which are developing in the new medium of the (...) Internet are analysed and, in the fourth section, related to the central theses of Derrida and Rorty. (shrink)

I defend the practical value of teaching undergraduate philosophy courses in the Internet. Three important objectives of philosophical education can be achieved as effectively by electronic means as in the classroom. First, information about the philosophical tradition can be conveyed by hypertext documents on the World-Wide Web. Second, philosophical dialogue can be conducted through participation in an electronic forum. Third, close supervision of student writing can be achieved by means of e-mail submission of written assignments. In each case, (...) I argue that the electronic method offers significant advantages to student learning. (shrink)

The article is intended to, in Sections I and II, flesh out and put within a metaphilosophical framework the theoretical argument first made in 2002 in “Do Internet Stings Directed at Pedophiles Capture Offenders or Create Offenders? And Allied Questions” (Sexuality & Culture 6(4): 73–100), with some modifications (See note 14). Where there are differences, I stand by this version as the final version of the argument. Section III addresses three experimental or empirical studies which might be thought to (...) contradict or confirm the data of the 2002 study. Section IV compares what we have done with the one other jurisprudential argument made by Summer 2005. Section V discusses why, despite the evidence and the arguments, these sting operations are popular with prosecutors and the public alike. Section VI comments on why my empirical study dating to 2002 does not appear to have gained wide acceptance, and what, if anything, can be said about this. -/- Note: The unusual length (for me) of the article is justified by its being data-driven. (shrink)

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy was founded in 1995 for the purpose of providing detailed, scholarly information on key topics and philosophers in all areas of philosophy. Articles are peer-reviewed and blind-refereed. The IEP offers access to a keyword site search engine and is free of charge to all Internet users. It is continuously revised and updated. It had 880 articles in 2024, and it is has 6.9 million different visitors every year.

An original deep history of the internet that tells the story of the centuries-old utopian dreams behind it—and explains why they have died today Many think of the internet as an unprecedented and overwhelmingly positive achievement of modern human technology. But is it? In The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is, Justin Smith offers an original deep history of the internet, from the ancient to the modern world—uncovering its surprising origins in nature and centuries-old (...) dreams of radically improving human life by outsourcing thinking to machines and communicating across vast distances. Yet, despite the internet’s continuing potential, Smith argues, the utopian hopes behind it have finally died today, killed by the harsh realities of social media, the global information economy, and the attention-destroying nature of networked technology. Ranging over centuries of the history and philosophy of science and technology, Smith shows how the “internet” has been with us much longer than we usually think. He draws fascinating connections between internet user experience, artificial intelligence, the invention of the printing press, communication between trees, and the origins of computing in the machine-driven looms of the silk industry. At the same time, he reveals how the internet’s organic structure and development root it in the natural world in unexpected ways that challenge efforts to draw an easy line between technology and nature. Combining the sweep of intellectual history with the incisiveness of philosophy, The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is cuts through our daily digital lives to give a clear-sighted picture of what the internet is, where it came from, and where it might be taking us in the coming decades. (shrink)

Parmenides of Elea Parmenides of Elea was a Presocratic Greek philosopher. As the first philosopher to inquire into the nature of existence itself, he is incontrovertibly credited as the “Father of Metaphysics.” As the first to employ deductive, a priori arguments to justify his claims, he competes with Aristotle … Continue reading Parmenides →.

_The Internet: A Philosophical Inquiry_ develops many of the themes Gordon Graham presented in his highly successful radio series, _The Silicon Society_. Exploring the tensions between the warnings of the Neo-Luddites and the bright optimism of the Technophiles, Graham offers the first concise and accessible exploration of the issues which arise as we enter further into the world of Cyberspace. This original and fascinating study takes us to the heart of questions that none of us can afford to ignore: (...) how does the Internet affect our concepts of identity, moral anarchy, censorship, community, democracy, virtual reality and imagination? Free of jargon and full of stimulating ideas, this is essential reading for anyone wishing to think clearly and informatively about the complexities of our technological future. (shrink)

When, as a philosopher, you concern yourself with issues of media theory, you are often confronted with the largely rhetorical question as to what philosophy has to do with media. That logical, ethical, aesthetic and epistemological issues, or questions concerning the philosophy of science and of language, are genuine philosophical questions seems self-evident to us today. The neologisms ‘philosophical media theory’ or ‘media philosophy’, however, sound unaccustomed, irritating, suspect. To some they may even appear to be a (...) contradictio in adjecto. In the following considerations I would like to demonstrate that in the conditions of the transformation of media currently taking place it is important and meaningful to construe the question of media as a philosophical question. My considerations are organised in three sections. In the first section some fundamental sets of media-educational problems with regard to the Internet will be outlined, to whose solution media-philosophical reflections can make an essential contribution. In the second section, two different conceptions of the currently evolving discipline of media philosophy will be introduced. Finally, in the third section, it will be shown how these conceptions, if they are sensibly combined with one another, could make a fundamental theoretical contribution to the clarification of important problems arising today in a media-educational perspective. (shrink)

This paper proposes a preliminary infrastructure for future philosophical discourse on the virtual, interactive, visual, top layer of the Internet. The paper begins by introducing thoughts on such words as real, virtual, reality, knowledge, and truth. Next, news summaries are provided illustrating some effects from the “real world” on the virtual part of the Internet, and vice versa. Subsequently, nine major categories of Internet variables are identified. Finally, over one hundred questions about the philosophical nature of the (...) virtual part of the Internet are listed and are organized into fourteen categories. (shrink)

The paper argues for the necessity of building up a philosophy of the Internet and proposes a version of it, an «Aristotelian» philosophy of the Internet. First, an overview of the recent trends in the Internet research is presented. This train of thoughts leads to a proposal of understanding the nature of the Internet in the spirit of the Aristotelian philosophy i. e., to conceive the Internet as the Internet, as a (...) totality of its all aspects, as a whole entity. For this purpose, the Internet is explained in four (easily distinguishable, but obviously connected) contexts: we regard it as a system of technology, as an element of communication, as a cultural medium and as an independent organism. Based on these investigations we conclude that the Internet is the medium of a new mode of human existence created by late modern man; a mode that is built on earlier (i. e., natural, and social) spheres of existence and yet it is markedly different from them. We call this newly formed existence web-life. Finally using two enlightening cultural-historical analogies (the reformation of knowledge and the formation of web-life) several fundamental characteristics of the web-life is presented. (shrink)

The paper argues for the necessity of building up a philosophy of the internet and proposes a version of it, an ‘Aristotelian’ philosophy of the internet. First, a short overview of some recent trends in the internet research is presented. This train of thoughts leads to a proposal of understanding the nature of the internet in the spirit of the Aristotelian philosophy i.e., to conceive “the internet as the internet”, as a (...) totality of its all aspects, as a whole entity. For this purpose, the internet is explained in four – easily distinguishable, but obviously connected – contexts: we regard it as a system of technology, as an element of communication, as a cultural medium and as an independent organism. Based on these investigations we conclude that the internet is the medium of a new mode of human existence created by late modern man; a mode that is built on earlier (i.e., natural, and social) spheres of existence and yet it is markedly different from them. We call this newly formed existence web-life. (shrink)

This special issue fosters joint exploration of personal identity by both philosophers, on the one hand, and scholars and researchers in Internet Studies, on the other. The summary of articles gathered here leads to a larger collective account of personal identity that highlights embodiment and thereby the continuities between online and offline senses and experiences of selfhood. I connect this collective account with other contemporary works at the intersections between philosophy and IS, such as on trust and virtual (...) worlds, thereby entailing further questions and debates. I close by exploring how these collective insights illuminate larger themes regarding technology—specifically, the debate between a distinctively modern Augustinian–Cartesian account emphasizing control, liberation, and immortality by way of escape from the body, vs. more contemporary alternatives in feminist, environmental, and information philosophies that highlight autonomy through, rather than against, embodiment. (shrink)

The content of this paper is an elaboration of Hubert L. Dreyfus’s philosophical critique of Artificial Intelligence (AI), computers and the internet. Hubert L. Dreyfus (1929-2017) is Ua SA philosopher and alumni of Harvard University who teach at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and University of California, Berkeley. He is a phenomenological philosopher who criticize computer researchers and the artificial intelligence community. In 1965, Dreyfus wrote an article for Rand Corporation titled “Alchemy and Artificial Intelligence” which criticizes the (...) masterminds of Artificial Intelligence. Dreyfus also criticized the order of computers via two books: (1) What Computers Can’t Do (1972) and (2) What Computers Stills Can’t Do (1992). He favored human intuition rather than the computer logic in his book Mind over Machine: The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of the Computer (1986). In 2001, Dreyfus wrote a book On the Internet, which considers the prominent phenomenon in the recent Industry 4.0. By elaborating on Dreyfus’s philosophy on the computer, artificial intelligence, and the internet, we will know the philosophical debate on the result of industry 3.0 (computer and artificial intelligence) and 4.0 (artificial intelligence and internet). Moreover, we will know the relation between humans and those industrial products. (shrink)

How can we explain why certain historically discriminated groups are under-represented in English-speaking analytic philosophy? I present a hypothesis which appeals to rules, rather than relying upon the social theories of Pierre Bourdieu. I do by means of an attempted pastiche of Renata Salecl, my third attempt.

Greeks of Pontian ancestry migrated, forcibly, from Pontus to Greece where they founded Pontian Greek communities, mainly in northern Greece. The rapid increase in usage of the Internet during the past years appears to be significantly affecting the activity of cultural associations in general. The Greek Pontian associations of Thrace have begun taking advantage of the Internet and social networks for their diversified activities, a “modernization” which has not been studied extensively thus far. In this paper, a corresponding (...) analysis is performed, concluding that the activity of the associations on the Internet reflects an upward trend, while an increasing number of them seek to maintain an active presence on the Internet through web sites and social networks. This activity includes primarily press conferences and informative announcements. (shrink)

The recent book from Marc Le Glatin Internet, un séisme dans la culture?, performs three intellectual acts. First, it resumes the main facts concerning the evolution of cultural practices on the Internet, particularly the multiplication of « free » downloading of works that are in principle protected by intellectual property. Second, it interrogates the notions of intellectual property and cultural diversity in relation to the new possibilities opened up by the Net. Third, it proposes some tentative solutions for (...) legal and economic problems, mainly the artists remuneration, related to current media transformations. Facts are correctly outlined and questions are worth asking. But the proposed solutions – inspired by a mix of centralizing jacobinism, socialism and post-modernism – sound deceptive because they are based on philosophical and political presuppositions that are quite contrary to the current stream of cultural mutation. I discuss the author’s thesis from the standpoint of a philosophy of collective intelligence and proposes some solutions oriented toward the best exploitation of the new technical possibilities in the service of human development and emancipation. (shrink)

In this volume philosophers from throughout the Asia-Pacific region discuss a wide range of topics related to the development of democratic values and ways of life. The papers explore ideas, values and practices related to democracy from the different perspectives of the great religious and philosophical traditions of Asia, as well as considering both philosophical issues and the place of philosophy in a democratic society. While the contributors represent different philosophical traditions, they are connected through a common concern with (...) humanity, a belief in the value of philosophical inquiry and scholarship and by a commitment to the value of philosophy education in building and sustaining democracy. (shrink)

This article explores the phenomenon of Internet addiction and its possible amelioration, from both Eastern and Western philosophical perspectives. Internet addiction is caused by the excessive use of the Internet and its resulting dependence, having negative effects on human well-being. The ideas of a key ancient Chinese Daoist thinker Zhuangzi 莊子 and his Western contemporaries, the Stoics, as viewed through the world, the things and beings in it, and their relationships, offer insights which may be used to (...) alleviate these effects. The application of and comparison between the two ancient philosophies in addressing the issue of Internet addiction can give us inspiration to confront the challenges of technological enslavement in general and Internet addiction in particular. This is no doubt a help in our pursuit of well-being. (shrink)

The Internet is an important focus of attention for those concerned with issues of extended cognition. In particular, the application of active externalist theorizing to the Internet gives rise to the notion of Internet-extended cognition: the idea that the Internet can form part of an integrated nexus of material elements that serves as the realization base for human mental states and processes. The current review attempts to survey a range of issues and controversies that arise in (...) respect of the notion of Internet-extended cognition. These include the issue of whether the Internet, as a technological system, is able to support real-world cases of cognitive extension. It also includes issues concerning the cognitive and epistemic impacts of the Internet. Finally, the review highlights a range of issues and concerns that have not been the focus of previous philosophical attention. These include issues of ‘network-extended cognitive bloat’, ‘conjoined minds’, and an entirely new form of cognitive extension that goes under the heading of ‘human-extended machine cognition’. Together, these issues serve to highlight the value and importance of Internet-extended cognition to contemporary philosophical debates about the extended mind. In particular, the notion of Internet-extended cognition has the potential to highlight points of philosophical progress that are not easily revealed by the kind of technologically low-grade cases that tend to animate the majority of philosophical discussions in this area. (shrink)

Buddhism, the Internet and Digital Media: The Pixel in the Lotus explores Buddhist practice and teachings in an increasingly networked and digital era. Contributors consider the ways Buddhism plays a role and is present in digital media through a variety of methods including concrete case studies, ethnographic research, and content analysis, as well as interviews with practitioners and cyber-communities. In addition to considering Buddhism in the context of technologies such as virtual worlds, social media, and mobile devices, authors ask (...) how the Internet affects identity, authority and community, and what effect this might have on the development, proliferation, and perception of Buddhism in an online environment. Together, these essays make the case that studying contemporary online Buddhist practice can provide valuable insights into the shifting role religion plays in our constantly changing, mediated, hurried, and uncertain culture. (shrink)

This article has two related aims: to examine how the Internet might be rendered an object of coherent philosophical consideration and critique, and to contribute to divesting the term “transcendental” of the negative connotations it carries in contemporary philosophy of technology. To realise them, it refers to Kant’s transcendental approach. The key argument is that Kant’s “transcendental idealism” is one example of a more general and potentially thoroughgoing “transcendental” approach focused on conditions that much contemporary philosophy of (...) technology misunderstands or ignores, to the detriment of the field. Diverse contemporary approaches are engaged to make this claim, including those of Verbeek, Brey, Stiegler, Clark and Chalmers, Feenberg, and Fuchs. The article considers how these approaches stand in relation to tendencies towards determinism, subjectivism, and excessive forms of optimism and pessimism in contemporary considerations of the Internet. In terms of Kant’s transcendental idealism, specifically, it concludes by arguing that contemporary philosophy of technology does not go far enough in considering the Internet as a “regulative idea”; in terms of transcendental approaches more generally, it concludes by arguing that openness to the transcendental has the potential to call into question presuppositions regarding what constitutes an “empirical” object of enquiry in philosophy of technology, thereby, opening the field up to important new areas of research. (shrink)

Dialogic: Education for the Digital Age argues that despite rapid advances in communications technology, most educational research still relies on traditional approaches to education, built upon the logic of print, and dependent on the notion that there is a single true representation of reality. In practice, the use of the Internet disrupts this traditional logic of education by offering an experience of knowledge as participatory and multiple. The challenge identified in Wegerif's text is the growing need to develop a (...) new understanding of education that will encourage us to provide new policies, and hold the potential to transform educational pedagogy and meet the realities of the digital age. This new logic of education is dialogic and characterises education as learning to learn, think and thrive in the context of working with multiple perspectives and ultimate uncertainty. The book builds upon the simple contrast between observing dialogue from an outside point of view, and participating in a dialogue from the inside, before pinpointing an essential feature of dialogic: the gap or difference between voices in dialogue which is understood as an irreducible source of meaning. Each chapter of the book applies this dialogic thinking to a specific challenge facing education, re-thinking the challenge and revealing a new theory of education. Areas covered in the book include: - dialogical learning and cognition - dialogical learning and emotional intelligence - educational technology, dialogic 'spaces' and consciousness - global dialogue and global citizenship - dialogic theories of science and maths education. (shrink)

This article argues for a clearer framework of internet-based “memes”. The science of memes, dubbed ‘memetics’, presumes that memes remain “copying units” following the popularisation of the concept in Richard Dawkins’ celebrated work, The Selfish Gene (1976). Yet Peircean semiotics and biosemiotics can challenge this doctrine of information transmission. While supporting a precise and discursive framework for internet memes, semiotic readings reconfigure contemporary formulations to the – now-established – conception of memes. Internet memes can and should be (...) conceived, then, as habit-inducing sign systems incorporating processes involving asymmetrical variation. So, drawing on biosemiotics, Tartu-Moscow semiotics, and Peircean semiotic principles, and through a close reading of the celebrated 2011 Internet meme Rebecca Black’s Friday, this article proposes a working outline for the definition of internet memes and its applicability for the semiotic analysis of texts in new media communication. (shrink)

This paper investigates the ethical issues surrounding the concept of Internet neutrality focusing specifically on the correlation between neutrality and fairness. Moving from an analysis of the many available definitions of Internet neutrality and the heterogeneity of the Internet infrastructure, the common assumption that a neutral Internet is also a fair Internet is challenged. It is argued that a properly neutral Internet supports undesirable situations in which few users can exhaust the majority of the (...) available resources or in which specific types of applications and services cannot be developed or properly deployed. The solution offered to these shortcomings is based on (1) an environmental approach to the Internet, (2) the four guiding principles of Floridi’s Information Ethics and (3) a principle called ‘Information Diversity’. The paper is divided into six sections. Section 1 briefly presents the debate concerning the concepts of network and Internet neutrality. Section 2 poses a general and unifying definition of Internet neutrality based on the critical assessment of several domain-specific approaches to the problem of neutrality. Section 3 is dedicated to the analysis of the relationship between Internet neutrality and the ethical principle of fairness. Section 4 introduces Floridi’s Information Ethics, the definition of Information Diversity and an analysis of how they can be used to address the limitations of Internet neutrality. Section 5 summarises the ethics of Internet neutrality and Information Diversity defining their relationship. Section 6 reviews the arguments presented in the paper clarifying the foundational role played by Information Diversity and Information Ethics in Internet policy-making activity. (shrink)

One of the most fascinating entries in Samuel Pepys diaries, from the 13th May 1665, recounts his experience of having been gifted a new pocket watch:To the ‘Change after office, and received my watch from the watchmaker, and a very fine [one] it is, given me by Briggs, the Scrivener… But, Lord! to see how much of my old folly and childishnesse hangs upon me still that I cannot forbear carrying my watch in my hand in the coach all this (...) afternoon, and seeing what o’clock it is one hundred times; and am apt to think with myself, how could I be so long without one; though I remember since, I had one, and found it a trouble, and resolved to carry one no more about me while I lived.Pepys’ excitement at being able to ‘see what o’clock it is’ might strike us as a very antiquated kind of thrill, but his account of the ‘trouble’ that follows from the distraction of being able to do so will most likely resonate with anyone with a smart phone. Like Pepys, many of us are familiar with the experience of carrying a small object around in our pocket with the capacity to distract and amuse. Many smart phone owners (myself included) may well have, like Pepys, ‘resolved to carry it no more about’ us—although (at least in my experience) such resolve inevitably breaks. (shrink)

The Internet appears to have become an ever-increasing part in many areas of people’s day-to-day lives. One area that deserves further examination surrounds sex addiction and its relationship with excessive Internet usage. It has been alleged by some academics that social pathologies are beginning to surface in cyberspace and have been referred to as “technological addictions.” This article examines the concept of “Internet addiction” in relation to excessive sexual behavior. It contains discussions of the concept of sexual (...) addiction and whether the whole concept is viable. This is done through the evaluation of the small amount of empirical data available. It is concluded that Internet sex is a new medium of expression that may increase participation because of the perceived anonymity and disinhibition factors. It is also argued that although the amount of empirical data is small, Internet sex addiction exists and that there are many opportunities for future research. These are explicitly outlined. (shrink)

Writing this article was motivated by the wave of protests in 2013 in Bulgaria. The long and massive protest in the summer of 2013 combined three important features: 1) young people and middle class as the main driver of the events, 2) political action for non-economic value and 3) denial of partisanship and political representation, and support for participatory democracy. These features of the protest relate well to the Inglehart’s framework and describe the profile of “postmaterialists”: people with self-expression values. (...) A question I ask is: how, in a “materialistic democracy” like Bulgaria, with only 2% of postmaterialists, was it possible to take place a large-scale protest for a non-economic value like “moral in politics”, which at the same time resembles other protests that have taken place around the world? The protests were closely connected with the usage of the Internet and social networks and in my article I discuss how the Internet can facilitate behavior consistent with higher-order, postmaterial values. (shrink)

This book throws new light on the way in which the Internet impacts on democracy. Based on Jürgen Habermas' discourse-theoretical reconstruction of democracy, it examines one of the world's largest, most diverse but also most unequal democracies, Brazil, in terms of the broad social and legal effects the internet has had. Focusing on the Brazilian constitutional evolution, the book examines how the Internet might impact on the legitimacy of a democratic order and if, and how, it might (...) yield opportunities for democratic empowerment. The book also assesses the ways in which law, as an institution and a system, reacts to the changes and challenges brought about by the Internet: the ways in which law may retain its strength as an integrative force, avoiding a 'virtual' legitimacy crisis. (shrink)

The prelims comprise: Introduction Internet Culture? Balance Utopianism Inherence Dystopianism Inherence Instrumentalism Conclusion Acknowledgments.